Of course Joseph Skizzen had not done anything comparable; he had merely obtained a post and eventually a professorship in this insignificant college called Whittlebauer by the dubious means of slightly squinked credentials. Notwithstanding his somewhat inaccurate résumé, he had done his job so decently he was widely admired and asked to piano at commencements, and on patriotic or religious occasions to tickle the ivories; he was also beseeched to speak at various women’s clubs, as well as now and then to offer some uplift to the Lions or cause Rotary to revolve; moreover, as a scholar he was held in the highest regard, for it was rumored that his several articles in important journals of music might be collected and published as a book, putting him high on the local hill of achievement from which there were naturally many who would be happy to watch him tumble, or even discreetly offer to push a bit if he seemed promisingly close to an edge.
Mallory died, they’d say, so we don’t know and cannot judge of his success.
Well, after achieving the peak, he climbed the skies.
And he is now the Man in the Moon, are we to suppose? Skizzen heard them reply … heard them reply … heard an echo among the mountains.
How happy the faculty and their dean had been when he had come to Whittlebauer as a young Turk, bringing to their small puddle, if not a large frog (such as Joseph Skizzen could have been had he puffed himself), then at least someone with news of the musical world (for instance, of Arnold Schoenberg, whose daffy ideas were all the rage). These notions might be tipsy-turvy to Skizzen’s two new colleagues, Morton Rinse and Clarence Carfagno, but even they had to be happy at the school’s hiring a young man already proficient in six instruments, learned in musical history, an Austrian actually, and with enviable experience in the classroom as well as someone with solid publishing promise.
There are few faculties, especially those of any college with a religious affiliation or one located in some dime-sized Toonerville, that honestly desire to hire staff whose degrees are more esteemed than their own or whose skills are likely to be more proficient than theirs or whose reputations may cast any kind of shadow, even though their protestations while serving on the search committee will conceal (without success) their fears and their intentions. In solemn session, behind fiercely cherished closed doors, they will find faults—with any candidate who is forced on their attention—cracks so minute only the eyes of a smidge could see them; they will be unsure of the lady’s suitability (she will be too young or too old, too homely or too pretty—she’ll be married in a minute, knocked up within a week, and borne off by her husband to hostess tea parties in Shaker Heights); or they’ll be smugly undecided about where the new fellow will be in his work twenty years hence (is there any honest future in Willa Cather studies?); they will wave the flag OVER-QUALIFIED like a military banner, be convinced the spouse will hate the school, his neighbors, and the town, and that both will gallop to greener pastures before a year is out, citing several precedents such as Professor Devise and his titillating daughter; they will be disturbed by what seems to be an absence of the proper faith in Mr. Brightboy’s background and be instead rather high on Mr. Dimbulb, whose dossier is superlative and whose letters, especially the one from Professor Dormouse, incline their fog to drift in the pip-squeak’s direction.
In private they will wonder why anyone with Mr. Brightboy’s highfalutin Ivy degree would want to live in Meager, Pennsylvania, a.k.a. Woodbine, Ohio, or why such a hotshot is even bothering with them, or why she is or he isn’t married. Minority people are certainly a priority, but how will this guy, black as a burnt match, his wife, and three kids make out in a farm-fed white-bread town? They do tend to marry young, don’t they? After which the men abandon the family and disappear.
At Whittlebauer, for the above reasons, the president had taken over hiring. Even the janitors and the secretaries. The librarian, the bursar, and the registrar. The groundskeeper. The nurse. President Palfrey, former head of history at Hiram State Junior College, who had held a degree from Yale like a sandwich board in front of him for so long his nickname was “the End of New Haven Is at Hand,” actually wanted to attract the best people possible, assuming they weren’t remotely near his former field of competence; but he was hampered by the fact that the college gave minimal benefits and minuscule salaries; took notice of attendance at church; prohibited alcohol not only to its students but forbade it to faculty living within a fifty-mile radius; regarded smoking, card playing, and nonconjugal intercourse as subversive character flaws; certainly was not, as its president put it, “a dell for the frolic of fairies”; and could offer only such cultural excitement as the community of Whittlebauer provided, which was the county fair that yearly featured harness racing, hog calling, bake-offs, sheepherding, pie, jam, and livestock judging, bottle knocking, and the ring toss, as well as pony rides during the whole second week of October.
One-half of the student body—perhaps one might call it the upper half—was too devout to be taught; their minds were safe behind a moat of tradition; and the other half had been compelled to come to Whittlebauer by parents, usually alums, who wished to protect their children from the temptations of the world or, at worst, were trusting the college to reform, rewash, and restore these wayward children to their parents in a condition as swaddle soft and blameless as they were when babes. Of the holy half, the upper quarter disdained the delinquents and held themselves aloof, while the lower quarter was energized by missionary zeal and sought to save the sinners from themselves. When it came to the bottom of this body, a quarter of the forlorn were morose and otherwise indifferent, serving time like convicts made of solid sullen stuff, but there was a coven of Satanists—in effect—who loved nothing more than the seduction of the innocent and the soiling of the pure, through patty-cake and pot, mostly, not certainly by means of unsettling research, offbeat scholarship, or heretical thought. In short: the hoity-toity, the condescending, the morose, and the mischievous made up the student body.
This division, Joseph would eventually discover, was universal among men: the snooty upper crust, the missionaries in the middle, the downtrodden, and the criminals. There remained only people like himself—floaters, like those dots before the eye—much in the minority, who could be found, momentarily, anywhere, who seemed to signify a problem but who could not be pinned down and were eventually ignored.
The aforesaid president of the school was a jowl-shaking enthusiast and mother’s boy whose specialty was the cultivation of a secularized piety more sugary than any breakfast bun. His name was Howard Palfrey, and he forgave everyone everything, moist-eyed and caring, his voice afalter with feeling—mostly that of awe for the blessed of God or, conversely, pity for the piss-poor—and projecting, especially through his vowels, if not much sense, at least sincerity. The ditherers adored him; the sanctimonious wanted to wash his feet; but Palfrey was too modest and too cautious to allow it, consequently the fawners were permitted to fawn a few at a time and always head high, with cheek pecks, because Palfrey’s handshake was infrequent, woeful, and wet. A bachelor, he exuded need; he called for care: the inept shambly neatness of his clothing begged for a presser for his pants crease, a starcher for his shirt collar, a knotter for his tie’s bows, and for his sock holes, frayed cuffs, and sweater ravelings, he wanted a knitter whose needles were calming, quick, and restorative.
Howard Palfrey loved sinners, he loved their pitiful state; he sorrowed for them; he was sensitive, supportive, and sweet. Except when sin showed up in his students, who were to be steadfastly righteous or please him by leaving with all dispatch for the Ivy League’s devilish teachings and fleshy corruptions, an option he liked to believe was real from janitor to provost, not excluding himself, who could have been head of Harvard had he not chosen his present humbler and purer service. Businessmen, who privately thought him a fruit, saw what a success he was at drawing to his side widows still sanctified by their grief—women who, as he wept for their loss, he knew had wills he might rewrite and would, after a wait
neither too long nor too arduous, be pleased, for the school’s sake, to execute.
He cast a spelll upon them, rattled their old bones, gave them leave to practice the safest sort of sex, the imaginary: Palfrey as the secret seducer in senility’s lascivious dreams. Joseph had laughed to see his additional l, for it was just right—Howard cast a spelll.
But he had never entranced Professor Skizzen, not even after promoting Skizzen to the chairmanship of a music department no larger or more distinguished than a trio of cacophonists. There was Morton Rinse, who played numerous wind instruments indifferently well—piccolo, fife, flute, and clarinet—Clarence Carfagno, who was the string man but did not pluck—neither harp nor harpsichord—and Joseph Skizzen, thought to be at his best with band music transcribed for a keyboard, who played the national anthem, the Grand March from Aida, and the school’s alma mater at various academic functions, as well as, in secret, with affecting hesitation, some of Liszt’s Mozart and Bellini transcriptions.
Morton Rinse had impressed Skizzen with his wit and way with words during the first weeks of Joseph’s howdydos. Morton offered the following judgment of the skills of Clarence Carfagno as a musician: Clare has three quarts of vinegar in his basement, so he calls himself a wine merchant. Of the cantankerous schooner-shaped librarian, Hazel Hazlet, Morton observed that her very face was a breach of the peace. If not the most politic of things to say to a newcomer about some of those to whom he has newly come, Skizzen thought them shrewd as far as he could tell, and cattily put. Rinse had a reassuringly jaundiced view of the world—he wore, he said, liver-colored glasses. Actually, he wore worsteds and wide ties and showed far too much cuff.
Morton was as thin as his flute and seemed shiny, as though he had had his chin and cheekbones polished. Not only did he have a characterization for every colleague, he believed data were trumps and delivered obscure information as if he were betraying secrets, not quite in a holy whisper but in a slightly lowered voice, entre nous. The best time to visit Haigerloch is at Whitsun when the lilacs are in flower. He would then put on an expectant look as if awaiting confirmation or enlargement. Naturally Rinse could recite the names of all the antique instruments. To Joseph’s considerable surprise and subsequent consternation, he knew who had established the two-hand-and-foot “sock” style on the hi-hat cymbal. He also appeared to be a specialist on the size, age, and quality of German organs and organ lofts and assumed that, since Joseph had played that instrument at his school, he would be eager to know details an ant might overlook if, as it always turned out, he wasn’t familiar with them already. My God, Skizzen thought, am I to pass my life among this lot?
Most of the rest of it, yes … most of the rest was the right answer. Nor, at this time, did Joseph know that Morton Rinse professed to be an amateur magician. The high point of his party performance was to play the violin with his tie. My God, Joseph would say to Miriam, am I to pass my life among this lot?
Yet it was true that when he had first arrived and had begun to settle in, his colleagues had been kind and friendly; he had listened to a little history on the width of railroad ties from his newfound friend Professor Rinse, who also knew what kind of clinkers bedded best and where they came from. Moreover, Professor Carfagno—who, with Rinse, had to endure a great deal of name play and consequently brought forward the figure of Castle Cairfill out of the haze of history to which he had been insufficiently consigned—Professor Carfagno seemed most attentive to Joseph, almost, it might have been fair to say, hanging on Joseph’s every word, and naturally this was flattering to a new recruit who saw everyone as a likely top sergeant, especially since he was fearful of being found out. They will know immediately, he felt. They will see the way I walk, and know. They will listen to me answer even an idle question, and know. They will trip me up without trying, licensed (as they all are) from tony schools far away; and his musical colleagues will be phenomenal prodigies, play rings around him, sight-read, have scores by the score shelved in their heads; and they will know. Instantly.
Actually it took them four decades. In the meantime, Clarence Carfagno died. A few others moved on. A number retired. The bleak sentence appeared. It became a yearly habit for a dozen datura to bloom and fill the south porch with their languishing flutes and heavy scent. The yew hedge grew. Nita disappeared behind her shrubbery.
Of course when a wit is witty at another’s expense, you must wonder when the wit will be at yours. After rinse came wring. And the devotions of Carfagno were those of a cultural toady, me-too, and mimic. If Skizzen indiscreetly professed a fondness for Berlioz, Clare boned up on bios, suggested recordings released that morning or those that were impressively out of press, would suddenly observe that “Au Cimetière” was really written for a tenor; and if you admired an article on “The Pines of Rome,” as unlikely as that might seem, he would be around next day with his annotations. Skizzen had hardly defined himself in terms of his own preferences before Carfagno had made these choices his—except that Clare’s announcement of them was a lot louder. So Skizzen said he loved Delius and watched his tormentor consume the Englishman’s drizzly confections instead of preempting one of Skizzen’s real passions.
During former times, when he and Miriam regularly had dinner together, he would bring up his disappointments, but she was never helpful, only forceful, chewing while she still had a mouthful of advice.
Professor Joseph Skizzen had a number of worries, chief of which was the fear that the human race might yet survive, a concern that had supplanted his previous wish that they might perish well past toenails, hair, and bones.
You have to listen harder than the jokes, Joey, his mother would admonish, and look where they pop from, and hear what the joker says when he jokes, not what the joke says when it’s said. You are so smart it makes them shiver in their skeletons when they see your smartness dressed for a party. So don’t tremble to them. They get brittle in their brains and fend you off with obscure facts and lapdog loyalty and such. Was it the width of the Thames at the Tower that the silly man wanted to show off about? Think how it must feel for them to have to study up a book just to tap-dance past your mastery of music one more time. You are a Schoenbuggy man, and who knows he but you?
That’s why Skizzen had chosen Uncle Arnold in the first place. To be his trophy wife. In a faculty such as the one Skizzen was likely to find at Whittlebauer, Schoenberg’s fearful name would be known, but not his music, the techniques of his teaching, or the import of his ideas. However, there were other reasons: not only was Skizzen now an Austrian, his life’s loyalties, if musically inverted, matched the strategies Joey’s father had set for his son, inasmuch as Schoenberg was a chameleon who had been born a Jew yet brought up a Catholic in a Vienna crowded with folks devoted to their beads. At eighteen, out of typical teenage rebelliousness, Skizzen supposed, Schoenberg turned himself into a Protestant, not the best way of leveling the path of one’s life, but splendid as a punch-in-the-eye for Mom and Pop and the smug burger-coffeehouse bunch—if they cared. Many years later, when Hitler came to power and Schoenberg was dismissed from his post in Berlin, he reclaimed the Jew the Nazis knew he was and fled to the United States—to teach in LA alongside other exiles—Adorno, Brecht, and Mann—and live in a yarded white stucco mini-manor in Brentwood with a small house for his setter built behind it and an Irish dog inside.
Joey felt his father felt—in the thirties waiting for catastrophe—the way Vienna felt to its artists and writers in the century’s early years, waiting for catastrophe, too—loathing the city as Karl Kraus did and fearing war, or bored with the Zeit’s complacent Geist as Georg Heym was, who wanted the greasy peace to end and welcomed strife and chaos that would clean the sewers and give swift passage to the shit of life. Sharing Karl Kraus’s apprehensions gave his father’s cheap violining a little class and his motives, so mysterious, some respect. Nita said his father said he smelled the carnage coming. Musil smelled it. And I smell it now, Joey told his mother. Ach, it’s my manure, she
laughed, showing him her hands.
A man, Miriam said, should change his coat, if he must, only to do the world’s business, not for his family or for his friends to whom he is fastened by feeling. That is not so easy to do, Joseph answered, because she was actually asking a question. Hard or not, that’s what Rudi ought to have done. Ought, Joey exclaimed. Ought? You, too, don’t forget, Mother, were supposed to be as converted as Rudi was—Joey laughed because he needed the practice—you were supposed to be a newly pregnant Jewish mother. But I was the same, Miriam insisted, the same, the same, all Rudi did was change my name—and even then only my name when it was written, not when I heard it spoken to me, not when I thought about myself, not when I remembered my life or his once or twice tenderness to me concerning which I say no more, no more, no more, because, though I now stand silent, I stand on my own path, amid my own rocks and grass, my tears do not spill from a false face, and I do not get my flushed forehead from a paint box but from kneeling on the ground.
At first Professor Skizzen thought the world would not put up with our monkeyshines for another hundred years and would throw mankind aside as a mistake the way it had so many other species, a rejection we no doubt deserved; but now he feared for the world—a world that was alone in the universe as far as he knew—the only earth—which he cared for more than he cared for himself.
10
Augsburg Community College was not a community college. It received no support from either state or city. Its misleading name came from a settlement called the Augsburg Community, a Utopian farm founded in 1822 by some heretical Lutherans most of whom ran away like unhappy slaves within the founding year, leaving two buildings and a few inadequately fenced fields. Utopia had not lasted long enough to fail or allow its tenants time to grow at least an imposing pumpkin. Two families remained behind, hoeing a plot, scavenging berries, and feeling more like squatters than founders. Much is made, in the history of the school, of the early struggles and the eventual success of these sweaty settlers. God smiled upon them, and they built a stone barn. God smiled again, and up went a spire. The two farms became four, ten families turned into a town, and the town, before everything fell down, became a college—the town square the college quad, the stone barn a dorm. There were more reassuring miracles here than Jesus had performed, not excluding Lazarus or the baking of loaves and the seining of fishes.
Middle C Page 12